


half moon

by sheelia



Series: natural forces [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic, Future, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 09:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7428931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheelia/pseuds/sheelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I can see the night sky from the place you used to be,</i>
  <br/>
  <i>the half moon in the sky is a reflection of me. </i>
</p><p>A stray cat hopped out of the bushes and scampered across the street, its shadow elongating like a giant in the moonlight. The half moon hung in the middle of a cloudless sky in its solitude, and Kenma wondered, eyes misting over, if the half moon ever felt lonely on a night like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	half moon

**Author's Note:**

> To my kuroken support circle - Maggie, Winny, milktea, Ina - as well as Eliza and Lark, who link me to wonderful krkn fanart on twitter all the time. Bless all you beautiful souls for fueling this burning passion. 
> 
> It's been a while since I finished something. I remember starting on this two months ago in Burger King lol. This is a continuation of _all the above_. Enjoy!
> 
> mood: [ DΞΔN x GAEKO - D (half moon)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiauCIJhv0), [ 검정치마(The Black Skirts) - EVERYTHING ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq_gsctWHtQ)

 

It happened over dinner one Friday night at Kuroo's family home. Between bites of braised pork belly and a swig of a glass of rice wine, Kuroo's father, sitting at the head of the dining table, asked, "So when are you going to find a wife and get married?"

The entire room sunk into coordinated silence; Kuroo's mother looked expectantly at Kuroo, and well, Kenma's parents had learnt to not expect anything from Kenma in this realm of his social life. Underneath the table, Kuroo drummed his fingers on his thigh. Kenma, next to him, went still, his breath held like he'd been thrown underwater. It had been years of them together like this, but their parents still didn't know.

Kuroo pushed more rice into his mouth and started speaking in muffled tones, something along the lines of "I'm busy", "Who cares?", and "You don't meet a lot of women in a company full of men." He forced out a large enough smile for both him and Kenma, but when he turned to check Kenma's reaction, he found that he wasn’t even looking at him. Instead, he was reaching for the plate of mixed vegetables with his pair of chopsticks, shuffling the pile around until he found a slice of fried tofu. His lips were pressed into a grim line in concentration. At least, that's what Kuroo hoped it was.

Kuroo's father sighed, and in the background the TV transitioned into the eight o'clock news. Something about teenage hooligans and a hijacked school bus, and Kuroo's father commented into his bowl of soup, slurping between sentences, about the moral decay of children these days.

At the end of the day, both Kuroo and Kenma bid their parents goodbye. Kenma headed down the driveway first (they had purchased a secondhand car ever since Kenma's workload increased), and Kuroo went back up to his old room to get something he needed.

Kenma was already in the car when Kuroo walked out of the house, his platinum blonde hair especially visible under the car's interior lighting. His head was leaning against the headboard, eyes closed. Kuroo closed the front door behind him, careful not to let it slam in the harsh wind. He cradled the two containers of leftovers in his hand as he approached the passenger side of the car, which stood out in the middle of the driveway, a symbol of modernity in a field of nostalgia.

He clambered in quickly, careful not to topple the containers, and shut the door. In the background, the ceaseless chime of the car alarm was cloaked by the tension between them. Kenma adjusted himself in his seat, pushing the hair on his face back and strapping on his seatbelt.

"Your seat belt," Kenma frowned. Returning his gaze to his front, he set his hands on the steering wheel.

"Sorry about my parents," Kuroo thought to say right after Kenma started the car.

Kenma reversed the car out of the driveway, craning his head back with a hand on the back of Kuroo's seat. "Yeah, don't worry."

On the drive home Kuroo rested his head on the window, even though he knew Kenma was going to get annoyed about the sweat mark he’d leave on the glass. The street lines, as straight as they may be, curved along every bump on the worn down suburban roads, and Kuroo watched the dotted lines disappear under the car, as if they were sucked in by a vacuum cleaner. Less than ten minutes later, it started to drizzle, the light rain leaving sounds of static as the car turned onto the highway.

Kuroo stared out the window for most of the ride home, judging from Kenma’s lack of interest in conversation. To multiple probes and questions, he finally responded, voice a little aggravated and hoarse on the vowels, "Kuroo, I'm trying to drive." And Kuroo knew something was up, because there was no way Kenma found it difficult to concentrate on driving when he'd practiced coordination all his life.

He looked over at Kenma and saw his hands firm on the steering wheel, his eyes glassy and expression unreadable. His profile caught the light of the artificial illumination along the highway, the red and white of headlights accentuating the shadows on the furrow of his eyebrows and the frown on his lips.

Turning back to look ahead of him at the sea of color, Kuroo tightened his grip around the two boxes of food, the warmth from the night's dinner seeping right through his pants, a welcome respite from the cold tension in the car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the time they neared home, long after they had turned out of the Kan-Etsu Expressway and descended down the narrow roads, Kuroo had fallen asleep in the car. His strong arms were still wrapped around the leftovers despite the fact that every other part of his body had gone limp, his mouth hanging open as he snored obnoxiously. The car crept down the narrow street until it approached the parking lot entrance, not wanting to bump into anything it couldn’t see.

It was especially dark that night, with the moon nowhere to be seen in the vast, black sky.

 

 

 

 

In the past six months many things had changed. Ever since taking on another author at the publishing house he worked at, Kenma saw his schedule shift into the wee hours of the morning, hence explaining the need for a car. This new and young author, although promising, was a handful; her endless stamina in making revisions inevitably meant that he couldn’t catch a break. He would stay in his cubicle, sometimes past midnight, poring over the manuscript. Occasionally he would rub his eyes when his vision got hazy, and the red ink from his pen would get on his hands. If he kept this up, her debut novel would be set to publish in less than a year. In his head he had planned this magnificent trajectory; it was something he had in his control.

What this also meant was that his schedule had shifted so perfectly that he hardly got to see Kuroo anymore. Now their lives ran in two imperfect parallel lines, only intersecting when they shared the same bed at night. And even then, by the time Kenma returned home, Kuroo would have already fallen asleep, leaving the half of the sheets on Kenma’s side of the bed still pristine. Kenma would stand there, in the dim light of their bedroom, feeling a profound sense of detachment, and the longer he kept this up, the further Kuroo seemed to stray from him, riding on a wave into the distance.

In the morning, Kuroo would nudge him awake, his breath warm on his neck as a prickling heat fanned over his face. His eyelids fluttering, Kenma strained to see the silhouette of Kuroo getting dressed, slipping on his white dress shirt and black slacks, the same image every day, over and over again, like a broken record player on loop. Almost immediately after, this feeling would escape him and he’d be plunged back into darkness. When he woke up, faced with unmade sheets and the depression of Kuroo’s body on his side of the bed, Kenma stared at the constant turn of the ceiling fan. For a moment he wondered if it were all a dream; Kuroo’s morning routine, long imprinted into his mind, all of it reproduced from memory.

He’d been going at this pace for close to two months. Kuroo knew about some of his reasons ‒ the promotion he had been eyeing, first of all. As well as the new author award, which was well within reach if he pushed his writer hard enough. But he had never mentioned the plot of the book to him. Not a single word.

It held significant meaning for him, and he wanted to reserve the pride and surprise for when he presented Kuroo with the first batch of copies of the book, along with the editor’s preface, which he would pen.

 

 

 

 

Kenma washed away the last bits of cleanser off his face and looked into the mirror, staring at his reflection. Pieces of wet, blonde hair stuck to his skin, framing his face oddly. The large, white shirt he wore in the summer hung awkwardly on his shoulders, accentuating the sharp lines of his collarbones.

When he emerged out of the bathroom, Kuroo was already in bed, still in his work clothes from earlier in the day. After dinner at his parents’ he was too tired to even slip out of them, diving into bed as soon as he passed through the front door. Sighing, Kenma had taken the leftovers, carelessly deposited on the dining table, and stuffed them into the fridge.

He stood in front of Kuroo, thinking about his next course of action. He managed to pull off his slacks, despite the trouble with his belt in the darkness. Wrestling him out of his dress shirt would have been impossible, so Kenma just unbuttoned it and hoped that that would make it more comfortable.

Kenma climbed into bed, his weight barely upsetting the balance of the mattress, and curled up on his side, facing Kuroo’s back.

“Kuro,” he called out experimentally, and waited. Waited for a stir of his body, or for the world to pause. He called out one more time, a little louder than before, but the sound of his voice was drowned out by the incessant hum of the ceiling fan and the relentless beating of his heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

  

“Morning,” he heard a familiar voice call from behind him and the shuffling of feet. Kuroo set down his spatula and turned to look behind him. Standing at the doorway of their bedroom, his hair tousled and loose shirt almost slipping off his shoulders, Kenma cradled one arm in the other, watching Kuroo cook in the kitchen. It reminded him of the day after their first night in their apartment. It was the first time ‒ it _still_ is ‒ living in the same space, and the memories of what transpired began to resurface: bright purple unfurling on each other’s necks, eyes puffy and swollen from the promise of being _free_.

Kuroo gulped, then cleared his throat, “You mean, good afternoon.”

He snickered when Kenma rolled his eyes, and watched as he approached him. He slid next to him, his body a practiced fit against his own, and peered into the pot. “It smells great.”

“Oh yeah?” Kuroo quipped, “An upgrade from convenience store lunches, huh?”

Kenma clicked his tongue, annoyed because whatever Kuroo said was true.

Weekends were the only time they had together, and Kuroo did what he could to make the most of it. He used ladled out some curry from the pot and poured it over a plate of rice.

“How the progress on the book going?” He asked, slightly hesitant after what happened the night before.

Nodding, Kenma replied, “Pretty good. The book’s coming along at good pace. We’ve been revising the earlier chapters, and I think she should be able to have the first complete manuscript by the end of next month.” He smiled as he said this, and Kuroo heaved a sigh of relief at this successful attempt at conversation in a long while.

“Can you finally show me what you’ve been working on? You’ve never been this secretive before,” Kuroo continued on. Using his foot to nudge against Kenma’s, he tried to offer a convincing pout.

“Ugh, Kuro. No,” He rebuked in mock annoyance, but from the way he struggled to hide to rising blush up his cheek, Kuroo could tell that there wasn’t anything he had to be worried about.

Kenma continued to eat, occasionally commenting between bites about how long he’s not had a real meal (ignoring yesterday night’s dinner at Kuroo’s). Backlit from the outside sun, Kenma was bathed in a warm, radiant glow, and Kuroo couldn’t help think about six months ago. Now Kenma was entrenched in work, and his own was starting to pick up. When he thought about being a full-blown adult, he never imagined it to be something like this. He had been the one that encouraged Kenma to pursue his career, insisting that nothing in life could wear them down, and he’s always been like that – overly optimistic, highly ambitious.

He very much wanted to say, _I miss you, please come back_ , but the words lodged themselves in his throat, a vice grip around his heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once it hit Monday they reverted back to the same routine, a shift in time zones that seemed to erase any sort of progress they made over the weekend. Tuesday, then Wednesday and Thursday. On Thursday night, Kenma pulled into the parking lot at 1 a.m. and checked the mail before heading upstairs. He opened the door soundlessly and flicked the light switch on.

He threw the letters onto the coffee table. Most of them were Kuroo’s anyway – he never had much of a habit of checking the mail.

Suddenly struck by a pang of hunger, he shuffled to the fridge to search for something to eat. There was still the loaf of bread he bought yesterday from the convenience store, sitting on the top shelf. Or maybe instant ramen, if he felt like waiting for water to boil. And then he stumbled on the two boxes of braised pork and mixed vegetables from almost a week ago. He pulled back, a little startled, having completely forgot about them. The thought of having comfort food produced a warm buzz that suffused through his body, but that was quickly replaced by anger, repulsion, and – he hated to admit it – _fear_.

He shut the door and opted for the instant ramen.

Standing in the balcony with a steaming cup of ramen, which did absolutely nothing to ease him into the humid weather, he stared out at the deserted street right outside their building. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular, but his thoughts circled around Kuroo’s father and the words that left his mouth. He pictured the movement of his lips, his mouth twisting into ugly shapes, and recalled the simultaneous wringing of his heart. It played through his mind again and again, the words gaining clarity with each repetition.

From a sideways glance, Kuroo was a constant in a sea of motion – unfazed, unaffected.

To be fair, there wasn’t much for him to expect. It would have been way too abrupt for them to come clean at the dinner table right there and then. However, the ease with which Kuroo redirected the conversation worried Kenma, and it dawned upon him that whatever they had built up over the years could easily be undone. He saw it flash before his eyes in deafening silence, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of planets from far away.

A stray cat hopped out of the bushes and scampered across the street, its shadow elongating like a giant in the moonlight. The half moon hung in the middle of a cloudless sky in its solitude, and Kenma wondered, eyes misting over, if the half moon ever felt lonely on a night like this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

  

“Oh, it’s just you,” was the first thing Kuroo’s father said when he opened the front door, his flat tone doing nothing to hide his disappointment. Kuroo retorted, pushing past his father and into the house, “It’s just me. You know, your son.”

“I should tell the Kozume’s that Kenma won’t be joining us tonight,” his mother said from her spot on the sofa in front of the TV. She still kept the plastic wrapper on the remote control, even though they’ve had the TV for as long as Kuroo could remember. It had never bothered him much up till this moment, but now the crinkling of the plastic heightened his annoyance, and he stalked over to rip it off the remote.

He and his mother sat on opposite ends as they watched the last ten minutes of the soap opera. Still holding the plastic wrapper, because the trash bin was too far away, he fiddled with it for a few moments, finding the action more interesting than the drama unfolding on the screen.

“Is Kenma held up at work?” His mother asked.

Kuroo crunched the wrapper in his fist. “It’s a busy week for him. From what I’ve heard, at least.”

Without Kenma and his parents at the dining table with them, the atmosphere quickly sunk into silence; all he could hear was the _click-click_ of chopsticks against porcelain, and he recalled his time in high school when he would eat as quickly as he could so that he could leave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

  

Kenma decided, just as he had finished getting ready for work, that he was going to skip it today. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and called to tell the publishing house that he was sick, adding a weak cough at the end for insurance.

He still got on the subway, into the same car he always does, in the same clothes he wore every day, just for consistency’s sake. The train was a safe space, something that’s accompanied him for as long as Kuroo’s had. He transferred onto the Yamanote line, climbing out from underground and into the sunlight, warm and overbearing. There, he sat in the train car for its entire loop around Tokyo city, staring out of the opposite window. At ten in the morning, the train was relatively empty, so there was no one sitting across him that blocked his view. Like shooting stars, the sun’s rays reflecting on the metal bars shot from one end to another in a beautiful display.

When that was over, he got out at Shibuya, where he headed towards one of his favorite dessert shops. He took a seat by the window as he broke small pieces off his pie up with a fork and shoved it into his mouth. Outside, the passing clouds cast the street in intermittent periods of light and shade, passing so quickly as if they couldn’t make up their minds. At this moment, Kenma started noticing everything in pairs: the two vending machines at the bend of the sidewalk, the two recycling bins right next to it, and the two pigeons perched on the power line right above them.

He couldn’t help seeing everything as a set, as if it was the way things came into being in this world. Kenma folded the receipt on the table into smaller squares until it was too thick for him to continue. Briefly, Kenma pictured himself existing out of a set.

On nights without Kuroo, the moon still comes out, hanging high above him in the sky.

He called the waiter over to ask for another pie to take home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

  

When Kuroo came home after dinner he was expecting Kenma to still be at work and the apartment to be empty. Seeing Kenma’s shoes at the door surprised him, his loafers crooked at the foot of the shoe rack, and he distinctly recalled it not being there this morning. The lamp in the living room was turned on low and the curtains were drawn closed.

Sensing something amiss, he hastily kicked off his shoes and scurried past the living room and down the hallway, where he was hoping to find Kenma. He passed by the kitchen, where he noticed a large takeaway box from Kenma’s favorite pastry shop in the bin, its cardboard bent and decorative ribbons hanging out of the bin like entrails. He recognized the packaging instantly, because it was expensive, and he knew that Kenma rarely frequented the place unless he had a reason to. If there was one thing he knew for sure, it was that Kenma only visited that place on his worst days.

Kenma was fast asleep on their bed when Kuroo reached their bedroom, his body curled up under the covers. His blond hair fanned across his face like a curtain. Kuroo’s mind was still swimming in confusion and he combed his fingers through his hair as he tried to think. He turned around and started to walk towards the bathroom, but froze at the door of the opposite bedroom.

When they first moved in they each occupied their own bedrooms, mostly for show for when their parents used to visit. Slowly, Kenma started coming into Kuroo’s room to sleep, and his belongings started to migrate into Kuroo’s dresser, leaving Kenma’s old bedroom as a shell of his past. Kenma had since stopped bothering to change the bedsheets, leaving the mattress bare on its box spring.

Except today it’s not bare. The bed sat in the middle of Kenma’s bedroom dressed in fresh sheets, even with a comforter spread over.

Kuroo stood in the doorway stunned, as if he’d been hit in the face with a blunt object. He swallowed thickly, putting the pieces together in his head. Leaning his back against the door, he thought back to a few weekends ago. For the longest time he thought that his father’s words only bothered him, but little did he know that they had also been plaguing Kenma’s thoughts for weeks.

Kuroo slipped into bed quietly, careful not to disturb Kenma in his sleep. He settled in to face Kenma on his side, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. Slowly, he enveloped Kenma’s clenched fist with his palm and eased it to relax. He let himself, for a brief moment, recall the first time they shared a bed for real – not like the sleepovers they used to have in elementary school, or the times he accidentally fell asleep in Kenma’s bed after a long day of volleyball practice – this was the day, at two a.m. in the morning, when Kenma showed up outside his bedroom door, soaked from the pouring rain. The night before Kuroo’s high school graduation Kenma had run down the street in the middle of a storm. A snap decision, prompted by impulse, he had kicked his covers off and sprinted down the street without an umbrella. Between breaths, Kenma choked out, voice strained, a confession.

In the silence of their bedroom, Kuroo’s heart continued to drum loudly in his chest like a reliable anthem.

 

 

 

 

Kenma was already awake by the time Kuroo woke up. He was lying on his back with his hands clutching the edge of the blanket, eyes transfixed on the turn of the ceiling fan like a pinwheel in a father’s hands. Kenma knew that he had stirred awake, judging from the quick glance sent in his direction. Kuroo rolled onto his back so that he was looking at the same view, earnestly trying his best to understand him. 

“There are a lot of things we don't say,” Kuroo started, his voice cracking over his first words of the day. Kenma continued to look straight ahead at the ceiling, as if trying to pick it apart. “Maybe because we’ve been together for all our lives, so much that every assumption can be approximated to be the truth, but that’s what they remain, really. As assumptions.”

Underneath the duvet his hand reached out to seek Kenma’s, and he felt the heat from Kenma’s body, comfortable and inviting. To his surprise Kenma’s hand found his first – an effortless capture.

With his fingers locked with Kenma’s, he said, “I love you. You know that, right?”

Kenma tightened his grasp as an affirmation, and rolled on his side, pressing his face into the crook of Kuroo’s neck. At the instant, Kuroo’s entire body swelled up with a sour sweet emotion, like a cup filled to the brim, threatening to spill.

They stayed that way, in silence, until the individual blades of the ceiling fan blended into a blurred disc – a full moon – and the familiar hum of its turn carrying them into the afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Do you think the half-moon gets lonely?” Kenma asked, his head tilted up as he looked at the sky from the porch. He managed to look different in the moonlight – more ethereal and untouchable like a dream. Sometimes, Kuroo has to pinch himself to make sure, even after ten, twenty years, that this was still real.

“Half of a half,” Kuroo weighed the words heavy on his tongue. “You know that the whole moon is still there, right? Because the sun-”

“I know that,” Kenma scowled.

Staring at the half moon hanging in the sky, Kenma continued, “The half moon is still whole, no matter what.”

Close up, the moon was nothing more than dirt and rock, run down from years of impact and desolation. But from his vantage point on the porch the moon was pristine, its surface smoothed over with a cool glow.

For a moment, Kenma felt the world underneath him disappear – the floor, the apartment, everything – a rapid expansion that left him feeling weightless. It was almost too much for him to bear. A realization came upon him, like the collapse of an empire, until he was left with nothing but him, Kuroo, and the familiar press of Kuroo’s palm against his own.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on twitter @refois  
> (◡‿◡✿)


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